To me, some of the responses to the Notre-Dame fire seemed very short-sighted. It’s neither the end of the world nor something to be celebrated. I was listening to two Syrian men being interviewed about the destruction in their country, and they said ‘it’s controversial, you could see it as selfish to look at the loss of some stones and not the loss of people - but it’s still a sadness. It’s a kind of regret, it’s not the same grief as when people die. The feeling of sadness is even greater when you realise the country has not been only losing its future, but also a significant part of its past.’
It’s ok to feel grief and loss when a part of a people’s history and shared heritage is lost, and I don’t really think it’s excusable to mock anyone who mourns these events, or celebrate them happning because of the wrongs that have been commited, historically and in modernity, by some social or political elements of the same society. That kind of black and white thinking plays exactly into the same repeating narrative of retribution, blame and further loss.
In light of what I have heard and read the past few days, good and bad, I have made a post to highlight some of the other lost, ransacked, gutted, broken buildings and monuments, great and small, from other cultures across the world. From top to bottom they are:
The Ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, England, destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th Century
The National Palace, Haiti, destroyed by earthquake in 2010
Ergen Church, Armenia, abandoned by the 1700′s and damaged during the second world war.
Tunkasila Sakpe (the Six Grandfathers), USA, taken illegally from the Lakota Sioux Nation and carved into mount rushmore between 1927-1941.
The Dresden Frauenkirche, Germany, destroyed in the bombing of Dresden and left as a war memorial. Rebuilt in the 1990′s as a symbol of a re-unified Germany.
The Parthenon, Greece, damaged extensively in the Turkish War of the 17th century, then defaced and looted by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin in the 19th century.
The Great Mosque of al-Nuri, Iraq, which stood for over 850 years before being destroyed during the Battle of Mosul, 2017.
The Ancient City of Palmyra, extensively destroyed from 2015 onwards during the Syrian Civil War.
The Glasgow School of Art, Scotland, destroyed in two fires between 2014 and 2018.
The National Museum of Brazil, Brazil, Destroyed by fire in 2018.
2087
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